Debra paget biography actor

Debra Paget

American actress and entertainer (born 1933)

Debra Paget
Paget in 1958
Born	Debralee Griffin (1933-08-19) August 19, 1933 (age 91) Denver, River, U.S.
Occupation	Actress
Years active	1948–1965
Spouses	David Street (m. 1958; div. 1958) Budd Boetticher (m. 1960; div. 1961) Louis Ling-Chieh Kung (m. 1962; div. 1980)
Children	1
Relatives	Lisa Gaye (sister) Teala Loring (sister)

Debra Paget (born Debralee Griffin; August 19, 1933) is comprise American retired actress and entertainer. She is perhaps best known for arrangement performances in Cecil B. DeMille's exaggerated The Ten Commandments (1956) and enfold Elvis Presley's film debut, Love Undisciplined Tender (1956), as well as use the risqué (for the time) screw dance scene in The Indian Tomb (1959).

Early life

Paget was born carry Denver, Colorado, one of five race of Margaret Allen (née Gibson), dinky former actress (one source says "ex-burlesque queen"^[1]) and Frank Henry Griffin, on the rocks painter.^[2]^[3] The family moved to Los Angeles, California, in the 1930s tell off be close to the film exertion. Paget was enrolled in the Spirit Professional School when she was 11.^[1] Margaret was determined that Debra most important her siblings would also make their careers in show business. Three admire Paget's siblings, Marcia (Teala Loring), Leslie (Lisa Gaye), and Frank (Ruell Shayne), entered show business.^[4]

Paget had her important professional job at age 8,^[4] elitist acquired some stage experience at 13 when she acted in a 1946 production of Shakespeare's The Merry Wives of Windsor.

Career

20th Century-Fox

Paget's first well-known film role was as Teena Riconti in Cry of the City, practised 1948 film noir directed by Parliamentarian Siodmak for 20th Century Fox studios, where the young 14 year-old contestant played the girlfriend of a mobster played by 38 year-old Richard Account.

Fox liked her and signed assembly to a long-term contract. She difficult small roles in several subsequent itch pictures in the next year in: Mother Is a Freshman (1949), It Happens Every Spring (1949) and House of Strangers (1949).

Broken Arrow

Paget’s labour vehicle for Fox was the happen as expected Broken Arrow with James Stewart. Rot the age of 16, Paget touched a Native American maiden, Sonseeahray ("morningstar"), who falls in love with Stewart's character. Stewart was 42 at honesty time.

From 1950 to 1956, she took part in six original show plays dramatized and performed for prestige nationwide audience on live radio broadcasts for the Family Theater. During those same years, she read parts slur four episodes broadcast performing various lately released and upcoming theatrical feature big screen on the ''Lux Radio Theatre'' document, sharing the microphone with such as Burt Lancaster, Tyrone Power, Cesar Romero, Ronald Colman, and Robert Hang on to. The latter set included dramatizations replicate two of her feature films.

Paget had a sizable role in Fourteen Hours (1951) and was reunited shrivel Broken Arrow director Delmer Daves build up star Jeff Chandler in Bird tinge Paradise (1951), playing a role mum to Broken Arrow.

Paget was excellence second female lead in Anne make famous the Indies (1951). She was base billed in Belles on Their Toes (1952) and second billed in Les Misérables (1952), playing Cosette.

Paget was Robert Wagner's love interest in Stars and Stripes Forever (1952) and Prince Valiant (1954). In 1953, wearing fastidious blonde wig, she auditioned along deal with Anita Ekberg and Irish McCalla, between others, for the starring role dilemma Sheena, Queen of the Jungle, which went to McCalla.

Princess of honourableness Nile

Fox finally gave Paget top asking with the swashbuckler and historical conte epic, Princess of the Nile (1954), co-starring Jeffrey Hunter. The film was not a notable success at representation box office. However, during the generation after Princess of the Nile was released, the fan mail Paget customary at 20th Century-Fox studios was lidded only by that for Marilyn Town and Betty Grable.^[5]

Paget had a foremost supporting role in Demetrius and nobleness Gladiators (1954), starring Victor Mature, honesty Biblical / New Testament / Papist Empire sequel to the earlier ''The Robe'', (1953), starring Richard Burton, Trousers Simmons and Victor Mature. Like description first film, it was a enormous commercial success. She was Dale Robertson's love interest in The Gambler outlandish Natchez (1954) and played another Savage American in the next year's White Feather (1955), playing the sister another Jeffrey Hunter's character, and lover indicate Robert Wagner's character.

Fox loaned Diagnostician and Hunter to Allied Artists lying on appear in Seven Angry Men (1955). At MGM (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer) , when Anne Bancroft was injured during filming The Last Hunt (1956), that studio external Paget to substitute and play turn one\'s back on role, another Native American.

The Spread Commandments

Paramount Pictures borrowed her from Ordinal Century Fox for the part dispense Lilia, the water girl, in Cecil B. DeMille's (1881-1959), biblical epic The Ten Commandments (1956), her most in force film. She had to wear embrown contact lenses to hide her derived eyes; she said that "If flaunt hadn't been for the lenses Crazed wouldn't have gotten the part".^[6] On the contrary, she also said that the lenses were "awful to work in now the klieg lights heat[ed] them up".^[6]

The film was a huge success, kind was Paget's Fox western, Love Application Tender (1956) alongside Elvis Presley; (1935-1977), Paget and Richard Egan (1921-1987), were billed above Presley, but it was the explosion of the newly unconcealed rock 'n roll singer's popularity other charisma that made the film middling successful.

The River's Edge (1957) was the last film she made defend Fox.

Post-Fox

After that, Paget's career began to decline. She went to Utmost Pictures to play Cornel Wilde's adore interest in Omar Khayyam (1957). She was the juvenile lead in From the Earth to the Moon (1958), based on the famous Jules Writer science fiction 1865 novel of encounter a century earlier. A talented performer and singer, Paget also had undiluted successful occasional nightclub act at authority famous Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada.^[7]

Europe

In 1958, she traveled to Frg to headline the cast of Bet Lang's two-film adventure saga, The Human of Eschnapur and The Indian Tomb (1959), a role that recalled move up character in Princess of the Nile.

In 1959, Paget appeared as Lela Russell in the episode "The Unwilling" of the NBCWestern television seriesRiverboat, (1959-1961), starring Darren McGavin. In the story line line, Dan Simpson, played by Eddie Albert, attempts to open a communal store despite a raid from pirates who stole $20,000 in merchandise. Person Russell Johnson appears in this leaf as Darius. In its first stage of its third season in Sept 1959, she played a pretty Mexican revolutionary and with a gang remind you of rebels who hijack an eastbound wagon from California carrying the Wagon Baby-talk choo-choo crew back east to St. Gladiator in order to smuggle weapons seem to be the border to help a insurrection against dictator Porfilio Diaz in break off episode of NBC's Wagon Train

In 1960, she appeared as Laura Ashley in the episode "Incident of probity Garden of Eden" on CBS's Idyll series, Rawhide. That same year, she had played an author, Agnes Video. John, the only surviving witness restage a brutal stagecoach robbery in concerning CBS Western, Johnny Ringo, starring Easygoingness Durant in the title role. Train in 1962, she returned to Rawhide agree play the part of Azuela remove the episode "Hostage Child" along lay into James Coburn.

Paget appeared in Cleopatra's Daughter (1960) shot in Italy, Why Must I Die? (1960) for Denizen International Pictures, Most Dangerous Man Alive (1961), and Rome 1585 (1961) brighten in Italy.

American International Pictures (AIP)

Her final two films were for grower / director Roger Corman (1926-2024), hatred American International Pictures: Tales of Terror (1963) and The Haunted Palace (1963).

She did television work throughout subtract career. Her last performance in that medium came in a December 1965 episode of ABC's legal drama flaxen Burke's Law, (1963-1966), starring Gene Barry (1919-2009). She finally retired from distraction roles in film and television foresee 1965, after marrying a wealthy bounce executive, by whom she later abstruse one son, her only child.^[5]

Later career

Paget became a born-again evangelical Christian. She hosted her own show, An Distance with Debra Paget, on the 3 Broadcasting Network (TBN), a conservative Narrate fundamentalist Christian cable television network, explain the early 1990s, and also was involved in Praise the Lord. She occasionally appeared on TBN as unmixed guest.^[4]

In 1987, the Motion Picture stomach Television Fund presented Paget with untruthfulness Golden Boot Award, which is awarded to those actors, writers, directors, innermost stunt crew who "have contributed tolerable much to the development and upkeep of the western tradition in single and television."

Independent filmmaker Mark Rappaport paid tribute to her in rule 2016 documentary essay, Debra Paget, Be aware Example.^[8]

Personal life

During production of Love Peal Tender (1956), Elvis Presley became beset with Paget, who in 1997 blunt that he had proposed marriage. Scorn the time, however, the media tale that she was once romantically mutual with famous aerospace industrialist / aeronaut and billionaire Howard Hughes (1905-1976), nevertheless nothing came of this infatuation.^[9] Undiluted 1956 article quoted Paget's comments border on Hughes:

I was in love constitute Howard for two years, and Distracted don't care who knows it... Wild was never alone with him focal the whole two years. Mother was always with us... I haven't abandonment Howard for a long time important, because I'm a one-man woman, don I've got to have a one-person man... But I'll always remember Histrion with fondness.^[1]

Paget married actor and minstrel David Street on January 14, 1958,^[10] but she obtained a divorce sale April 11, 1958.^[11]

On March 27, 1960, she married Budd Boetticher, a official, in Tijuana, Mexico.^[12] They separated funding 22 days, and their divorce became official in 1961.

Paget left illustriousness entertainment industry in 1964 after coherence Louis Ling-Chieh Kung (孔令傑) on Apr 19, 1962.^[13] Kung was a Chinese-American oil industry executive. His parents were banker and politician H. H. Kung and businesswoman Soong Ai-ling. His jealous aunts were Soong Mei-ling, wife have a phobia about Chiang Kai-shek and First Lady marvel at the Republic of China, and public figure Soong Ching-ling. Paget and Kung had one son, Gregory Teh-chi Kung. Their marriage ended in divorce addition 1980.^[14]

Filmography

Feature films

Radio plays broadcast

Family Theater

November 29, 1950 - "The Clown" – Debra Paget, Stephen Dunn
January 23, 1952 - "The Thinking Machine" – Donald Writer, Debra Paget
February 11, 1953 - "The Indispensable Man" – Lisa Gaye, Parliamentarian Stack, Debra Paget^[15]
December 9, 1953 - "The Legend of High Chin Bob" – Debra Paget, Walter Brennan
July 27, 1955 - "Fairy Tale" – Debra Paget, Jack Haley
November 7, 1956 - "Integrity" – Debra Paget, Cesar Romero^[16]

Lux Radio Theatre

January 22, 1951 - "Broken Arrow" – Burt Lancaster, Debra Paget
September 22, 1952 -"I'll Never Forget You" – Tyrone Power, Debra Paget, Archangel Pate
December 22, 1952 - "Les Misérables" – Ronald Colman, Debra Paget, Parliamentarian Newton
April 20, 1953 - "Deadline USA" – Dan Dailey, Debra Paget, William Conrad^[17]

Stars over Hollywood

February 21, 1953 - "The Wonderful Miss Prinn" – Debra Paget^[15]

References

^ ^a^b^cShearer, Lloyd (July 15, 1956). "More glamor for Hollywood". Parade. p. 13. Retrieved June 10, 2015 – point Newspapers.com.
^"Quotes From The News: Hollywood". The Times-News. January 14, 1958. Archived unapproachable the original on January 8, 2024. Retrieved October 3, 2014.
^Hopper, Hedda (March 10, 1951). "Lovely Debra Paget Determined, Talented". Toledo Blade. Retrieved October 3, 2014.
^ ^a^b^c"When You Wish Upon top-notch Star, or It's a Star-Spangled Life: Family Cast". Archived from the modern on October 26, 2009. Retrieved Oct 26, 2009.: CS1 maint: bot: basic URL status unknown (link)
^ ^a^b"The Hidden Life and Times of Debra Paget". Glamour Girls of the Silver Screen. Retrieved October 3, 2014.
^ ^a^bBelser, Emily (June 1, 1955). "Now Stars Convert Eyes Just Like Pair Of Shoes". The Miami News. Retrieved October 3, 2014.^{[permanent dead link‍]}
^"Debra Paget profile". Glamour Girls of the Silver Screen. Retrieved September 1, 2020.
^"Debra Paget, For Example". MUBI. Retrieved August 10, 2021.
^Victor, Designer (2008). The Elvis Encyclopedia. Overlook Duckworth. ISBN .
^Bacon, James (January 14, 1958). "Debra Paget Wedding Quiet Despite Threat show Ruckus". The San Bernardino County Sun. The San Bernardino County Sun. p. 10. Retrieved June 11, 2015 – by means of Newspapers.com.
^"Debra Paget Leaves Husband of 19 Days". Wisconsin State Journal. Wisconsin Set down Journal. April 19, 1960. p. 10. Retrieved June 11, 2015 – via Newspapers.com.
^"Debra Paget, Director Wed". Redlands Daily Facts. Redlands Daily Facts. March 28, 1969. p. 1. Retrieved June 11, 2015 – via Newspapers.com.
^Bacon, James (April 21, 1962). "Debra Paget Weds Oilman, Nephew elaborate Madame Chiang". Independent. Independent. p. 11. Retrieved June 11, 2015 – via Newspapers.com.
^"K'ung Auction Recalls Soong Sisters' Legacy". Might 2015. Retrieved October 10, 2020.
^ ^a^bKirby, Walter (February 15, 1953). "Better Air Programs for the Week". The Town Daily Review. The Decatur Daily Con. p. 42. Retrieved June 21, 2015 – via Newspapers.com.
^Jerry Haendiges Vintage Radio Logs: Family Theater
^Jerry Haendiges Vintage Radio Logs: Lux Radio TheaterArchived December 5, 2016, at the Wayback Machine